Germany recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, as some of you might know. It’s definitely one of the few better occasions for this nation to celebrate. The opulent event in front of the Brandenburg Gate saw multiple performances by plenty of established acts which might seemed a bit strange to foreigners and definitely needed an explanation or two. There were four men in their forties acting as cool rap gang (DIE FANTASTISCHEN VIER, Germany’s hip hop pioneers), a crumpled old man with hat and sunglasses who could barely sing (UDO LINDENBERG, an immortal legend of German rock) and finally a bald guy acting crazy while spinning a few nubs connected to his MacBook (That’s PAUL KALKBRENNER, you might have heard of him).

All in all, a local music scene is always hard to understand from the outside. It’s usually quite strange and unique and difficult to get if you didn’t grow up in one nation’s cultural environment. German music is slowly but steady getting a bit more attention. Well, of course you got notorious acts like RAMMSTEIN, teenie-poppers TOKIO HOTEL and a handful of electronic musicians. But with a new exceptions in the past (NENA’s ’99 Luftballons’ is not forgotten) international success was always bound to English language. Kind of sad for a nation who had Schiller, Goethe and Brecht.

As the headquarters of NOTHING BUT HOPE AND PASSION are located in the heartland of Germany’s creativity we are quite aware what potential new acts are currently making a buzz right here. Even if some of them are not yet ready to enter the commercial market (and others are not even interested in making an attempt) there is definitely a lot of potential aside the big mainstream acts. Potential that might be even interesting for you if your German isn’t that fluent. So we compiled ten great acts, 8 from Germany plus 2 from Austria and Switzerland which we think deserve international attention. The bands on the following ten pages definitely know their ways with the often difficult German language and are ready to carry it to international heights with a lot of self-confidence and creativity. Herzlich Willkommen!